


Infinite Possibilities

by EllieRose101



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Fix-it, Episode: s06e17 Normal Again, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25909048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieRose101/pseuds/EllieRose101
Summary: Buffy discovers she’s not as powerless as she thought, stuck inside that institution. (Goes way off canon from Normal Again.)
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	Infinite Possibilities

**Author's Note:**

> Are you ready for things to get a little meta?

One Shot

_Please, not again._

The door to Buffy’s room swung inward and she flinched, trying valiantly to fold herself into the tightest ball she could. If she could just fit snug into the corner furthest from sunlight and clipboards and squeaky shoes, maybe she’d disappear. Maybe the doctors wouldn’t see her, or would just leave her alone. She couldn’t handle any more straps or needles or words and definitely could not handle seeing her mom or dad. Not like this. Not without knowing if it was really them.

Theirs was far too tempting a lie. Because it was a lie. Wasn’t it? She’d been so sure, before, but now….

“Hi, Buffy.”

A whimper escaped her throat and she closed her eyes, hating how weak she felt. She hadn’t felt so powerless since… since Giles drugged her. Had he drugged her? Surely she hadn’t imagined that. Why would her mind have invented such betrayal?

“Buffy,” the person said again. It was a woman with a soft voice. Buffy risked a glance and saw she was staying by the door, giving her plenty of space. “It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you.”

Buffy swallowed. Her voice was hoarse as she asked, “What do you want?”

The nurse hesitated – Buffy could see now that she was a nurse, not a doctor. Her name tag said she was called Polly. “I want to show you something,” Polly said tentatively. “But you’re maybe not ready for that. Could I talk to you for a minute?”

Buffy couldn’t make herself answer. It felt too much like a trap. Sure, Polly seemed nice, but Buffy didn’t know her. She didn’t know if she could trust her existence, how could she put even a little faith in another person?

“I’m going to come in and shut the door,” said Polly, “but I’ll stay this side of the room.”

Buffy watched as she did exactly that, still keeping her distance. As if Buffy were a wild animal. _Am I?_

“Listen,” said Polly. “I know you’re really confused right now.”

A scoffing sound escaped Buffy’s throat of its own accord and Polly smiled, if a little sadly.

“I’m sorry you’re here,” she said. “You’ve already been through so much.”

“What do you want?” Buffy asked again, her voice a little stronger now.

“You’re going to get out of here,” said Polly.

Buffy felt her eyebrows shoot up. “I am?” _To where?_

“Yes,” said Polly kindly. She sounded so sure of it, it made Buffy ache a little. She hadn’t felt sure of anything in so long, and she missed it. “When you go,” continued Polly, “we want you to know you have options. That things can be okay, if you let them.”

_Huh?_ Buffy frowned. “W-what does that mean?”

Polly smiled again. “You’ll see. We’re getting there. Just know for now that you’re not alone, and you will get out of here.”

Well, that was… more than she had known. And, yeah, kinda a lot in itself.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” Buffy asked, suddenly desperate to know the opinion of this lady who she didn’t know and maybe shouldn’t trust and possibly wasn’t real. She was surprised when Polly laughed.

“Oh, honey, we’re all a little crazy. Well,” she tilted her head to the side, “some of us more than others. But you–” her eyes twinkled. “You’re going to be okay, Buffy. I believe it. You’ll see and you’ll make it right.”

_Right._ What did that even mean anymore? Buffy kinda wished Polly would stop the head-tilt twinkle-eye thing, because it reminded her weirdly of Spike, and that hurt on levels she couldn’t afford to think about even before the world had turned upside down and someone started shaking it like a kid with a piggie bank and mighty need for candy.

“What did you want to show me?” Buffy asked, because real or not, her curiosity was piqued and this encounter was already the best one she’d had in the institution thus far. Not that that was saying much.

“Possibilities,” said Polly.

“Vague much?” said Buffy before catching herself and clapping a hand across her mouth. Back talking wasn’t good. Not here. Here it was punished. Pithy comments were from the other place, said by the other Buffy.

This Buffy waited for Polly to get indignant and either get up and leave or try and medicate her out of personality outbursts, but what she actually did was laugh again.

“That’s the spirit,” she said. “And yes, you’re right. I’m being vague and that can be irritating. I’m just trying not to overwhelm you with everything at once.”

“O-kay,” Buffy said cautiously. _Am I on camera? Is someone watching this?_

“I know you’re the impatient type,” said Polly, making Buffy wonder if she really did know her, a little. “I’m the same. If it were me? I’d want to know everything, too. No time for nonsense, that’s me. And you’re the Slayer. Faced all kinds of things. I think you can handle a little honesty.” She paused and admitted, “That’s understating it. There’s a _lot_ of honesty to face. But you can handle it. How about we throw caution into the wind and just jump in?”

Polly gestured behind her and Buffy stared. She… she’d called her the Slayer. She believed her? Did that mean the other stuff really was real, or that Polly was as cracked as Buffy was supposed to be?

Polly opened the door and held it. “You won’t miss any bed checks,” she assured Buffy. “No one will even know you’re gone.”

Buffy stared a second longer but ultimately couldn’t resist. Even if it was a trap, the possibility of finding out what the hell was going on was just too enticing. If there was a shot at everything making at least a little more sense, she wanted it. She needed it.

On shaking legs, she got up and crossed the room to meet Polly at the door. “Where are we going?”

Polly pointed a little way down the corridor to a nurses’ station. Both it and the corridor itself were empty, so Buffy braced herself and made her way over, sighing as she sank into the soft memory foam of one of the chairs at the station. She hadn’t really been aware of how sore her muscles were from all of the cowering until she’d moved. The support the chair offered was welcome relief.

Polly moved around behind Buffy, taking a seat at the terminal on her left. “I’m going to send some things to your screen,” she said. “It’s connected to this computer, see?” She indicated a wire that ran from a tower to the two monitors, one in front of each of them. Polly had a keyboard and Buffy had a mouse.

“I’ll bring the documents up and you can scroll,” she said. “That’s easy enough, right?”

“Uh, sure,” said Buffy, bracing herself again. She stared into the darkness of her screen, waiting for the first document to pop up. She was assuming what she was about to see was a report about her condition, and maybe her care, going forward. She didn’t know what else.

The screen blinked on and words appeared. Buffy read the first sentence and blinked. She turned to Polly, then back to the screen for a double-take.

“What is this?”

“Read a little more,” said Polly. “I’ll answer your questions after.”

The words blurred in front of Buffy’s eyes as tears sprang to them with no warning. Her breathing came in sharp bursts and it was a long time before she could force it back into some kind of rhythm.

Beside her, Polly got up and shuffled around, producing a box of tissues and a small cup of water after a few moments. Buffy took both gratefully, too far gone to give either object the suspicion they deserved. She blew her nose, sipped some water, and looked back at the screen.

It hadn’t changed. The words were definitely not a report. They were… something she didn’t have a name for. It was like a story, but it was written as if it was by her. Like a journal entry or something, but for a life Buffy had never lived. Not this insane-o Buffy and not Sunnydale Buffy.

Except – she cast her eyes further down the document and they landed on the word Sunnydale. So it existed in this world. Whichever one she was reading about. But nothing else fit. The details didn’t make sense.

Buffy looked at Polly again, hoping to god she’d offer some kind of explanation at last.

“It’s one version of events,” she said, seemingly studying her expression, maybe waiting for her to flip out again.

“This didn’t happen,” said Buffy, pointing to her screen: the description of her having a nice seventeenth birthday with no trauma – no creepy demon boxes, no loss of virginity, no awful consequences – just a nice, if a little dull, surprise party complete with cake and party hats.

“It could have, is the thing,” said Polly. “Right now, you’re stuck trying to figure out what’s real from two options, and neither of them particularly great. This exercise is to show you there are multitudes of other ways things could have gone. Ways things can still go.”

Buffy closed her eyes and sipped some more water, swishing it around in her mouth as her mind tried frantically to assimilate what she was being told. Polly had warned her it would be a lot to take in, and that part was right, at least. Buffy had wanted answers, and as far as she could tell, she was getting them, she just didn’t know what any of it meant yet.

“I started you out with something tame,” said Polly, making Buffy open her eyes and look at her again. “Now let me try you with something a little more exciting.”

Buffy’s stomach lurched. She honestly wasn’t sure she could handle anything more, but she dutifully returned her eyes to the screen and read. This time, Polly had pulled up a document that retold the events of Buffy’s first encounter with Spike. Except in this version, the fighting somehow turned into kissing and– Buffy’s cheeks burned and she had to look away. Because _woah_ with the graphic detail!

“That _definitely_ didn’t happen!” she assured Polly. Did she think that it had? That she and Spike had done… _that_ , right there in the middle of the school corridor? In what reality would that even–

Wait. Buffy backed up on her half-formed thought as something clicked in her head. “I’m reading about an alternate reality?” she asked Polly, now studying _her_ face for any kind of tell-tale sign she was on the right track.

There was no need for intensive examination. Glee was shining from Polly’s eyes, clear as day. She clapped her hands twice and brought up another document.

“This one isn’t so racy,” she assured Buffy, grinning. “I still think you’ll find it amusing.”

Buffy read, equal parts surprised and embarrassed to discover it was another one that featured Spike kissage. Though no sex. Polly had indeed toned it down again, as promised. She put up document after document and Buffy read them all with wide eyes, scrolling down and down. Drinking in all of the information and developing an urge for more; to find out all of the possible realities she could have had, no matter that it made the one she ended up in all the more bitter by comparison. She didn’t know how many accounts she read of her life working out before Polly stopped opening new links. She didn’t know how she felt about someone else having seen the documents – a thousand and one scenarios in which Buffy got a happy ending.

“Are, um….” She worried her lip. “Do all of these involve me ending up with Spike?” Because all of the ones she’d read had, and they were weirdly great scenarios, but she struggled to believe they could happen. Worlds where she thought before she struck out with her fist, or where he paused before throwing a barb, and they talked and things just… flowed to rightness. That couldn’t be. Life wasn’t that simple.

Polly grimaced. “There are others,” she admitted. “Are you sure you want to see them?”

“Yes,” said Buffy, now entirely confident. All of her previous apprehension was gone and she was invested in her task of finding out all that she could. She didn’t know what would happen at the end of it all, if anything, but for now, she was sure. She wanted to know.

She looked at the next document, her eyes jumping over the page for a second before skipping back to the top. It seemed to be about Angel. About _her_ and Angel. Buffy was about to ask what was with all of the stories being about great romance when she got caught up again, continuing to scroll and read and read and scroll, all the heat of her cheeks fading out and her stomach flipping over.

This wasn’t romance. It was a tragedy.

Sure, on the surface it seemed nice, but all of the problems she and Angel had were still there. Nothing had been resolved, they were just carrying on like they didn’t exist. Buffy didn’t have to get to the end to know it wouldn’t work out. She asked for the next one (another Angel story), and the next (an account of how things would have gone if she’d caught Riley before he flew away in his helicopter), and the one after that.

Buffy gaped. Because _eww!_ She _so_ did not see Xander that way. With no small sense of dread, she was very close to asking to go back to all the Spike stories when another one flashed up: one in which Faith didn’t turn bad, and they got closer, and feelings developed, leading to… other things.

_Again with the woah!_ That one was definitely… something. Better than the Angel and Riley scenarios by miles (she wasn’t even going to acknowledge the Xander scenario in her head, because no way in _hell_ ).

Mind reeling, Buffy really didn’t think she could take any more. Thankfully, Polly seemed to have picked up on this, because she’d stopped sending documents over again.

“W-what do I do with all this?” asked Buffy, her voice shaky again. It would probably take a year to process all of the realities she’d read about, but did any of it matter? They weren’t hers. She was still stuck in limbo between a sucky version of Sunnydale and here, where none of the people she could potentially build a life with even existed.

“You choose,” said Polly evenly, her tone the most serious Buffy had heard it the entire time they’d been together. How long had it even been? How come no one else in the hospital was around, catching or interrupting them?

“What do you mean, choose? I… I can’t just decide to go and live out one of these lives, can I?”

“Yes and no,” said Polly, making Buffy groan.

Just as she was about to complain about the sudden return to vagueness, she had her second revelation of the day: surrealism plus vagueness and potential futures had always equaled the same thing in the past – Slayer dreams.

Again, Buffy eyed Polly and again Polly’s eyes switched to glittering, as if she knew what Buffy had figured out and was really, really happy about it. 

“You’re not a nurse,” she said plainly, needing to hear it out loud.

“No,” said Polly, “I’m not.”

“You work for the Powers.”

Polly nodded but didn’t reply out loud again, as if she wanted to leave Buffy room to continue.

Buffy did continue, because she was pretty sure she got it now. “These are alternate realities,” she affirmed, “and I can pick one to live in.”

“Ah,” said Polly with a slight shake of her head. “Not quite. You have to go back to your own reality.”

Buffy’s stomach sank. She had to go back to suffering? To friends who’d ripped her from heaven and expected her to be grateful about it?

“Why even show me this?” she demanded of Polly, suddenly furious with her, and with herself. Because damn it, she’d gotten sucked in. Despite everything, she had grown to trust her, and it was all for nothing. _Betrayed again._

“You do have a choice,” said Polly.

“But you just said–”

“Buffy,” said Polly, her tone patient, as if talking to a child, but not unkindly. “You’re back thinking within a binary.”

Buffy’s nose scrunched up as she tried to translate what that meant. Binary meant… “Two options? I’m stuck thinking there are only two options, but there are more? Even within my own reality?”

Polly smiled brightly again. “Bingo,” she said, succinctly.

“Okay,” said Buffy, her brain still trying to catch up. “So, I go back and, what? What are all my other options?”

“That’s for you to decide,” said Polly. “That’s the whole point!”

_Huh._ Buffy took a long minute to think about that. _I can go back and do… anything. Decide to leave the Hellmouth. Decide to join the circus, or go out and get vamped, or work really hard in the Doublemeat Palace to become manager, working my way up through the ranks from there until I become CEO or whatever and can afford college again. I could try out other jobs. I could be a zoo keeper or an artist or_ – she smiled a little – _a nurse_. The possibilities really were endless, once she’d started listing them out in her head, but so many of them felt empty. None of them were like what she’d read about.

Just like that, a third revelation clicked in Buffy’s brain: the common factor in all of her happy alternate realities.

“Yes,” said Polly, as if reading her thoughts again. “Now you’re getting there.” She glanced at her watch and noted, “A good thing, too. Time’s almost up.”

Buffy’s brain sputtered. “But, wait!” she protested. There was still so much she wanted to ask. Not knowing how long she indeed had, she went for the most pressing: “Are the Powers that Be really suggesting I get together with Spike? Evil vampire _Spike_?”

“Listen,” said Polly, taking Buffy’s hands in her own, “you are our champion, and you deserved your reward. Many of us were not happy with Rosenberg’s little show of power, and none of us can say we’re okay with what it’s done to you.” Again, she smiled, now a little sadly. It was like she had a different smile for every occasion. “We want you to be happy, Buffy. You’ve seen the options. I think you know now which ones work out, but they’re _your_ options. It’s your choice. You’ve earned the right to do whatever you want but,” she leaned in conspiratorially close and whispered, “if you ask me? I think you should do it. Choose happiness, Buffy.”

Buffy was staring at her again, wondering for the millionth time if she could believe any of this. Polly had certainly put forth a convincing argument. But Spike…. _Choosing_ Spike…. It would be choosing happiness? It sounded too good to be true. Too out there. Though, considering she’d battled demons for six years and been to heaven and back, what did ‘out there’ even mean anymore?

As Buffy continued to sit there, scenarios of her own creation flying through her head, she had to admit – if only to herself – that it was tempting. She hoped Polly would give her the hard sell again, so that it felt like less of her own responsibility, but Polly was starting to fade out.

Buffy felt her blood jump in her veins as the feel of Polly’s hands disappeared and the scene before her turned black. She blinked, utterly panicked, before light appeared. A kind of diffused light. She didn’t know from what source.

With a jolt, Buffy sat up and looked around, trying to figure out where the hell she was and _when_ the hell she was, and what the hell was happening now.

Spike stirred beside her. A very naked and kinda cut up Spike.

“You all right, pet?” He slid an arm around her waist, stroking the skin there.

_Click click click._ The gears in Buffy’s mind kept whirring. She knew this place. She’d been in this position before. Still, she looked around, trying to take it in.

“W-when did the building fall down?”

Spike visibly pondered the question for a moment. “I don't know,” he said at first. Then, “Must have been sometime between the first time and the, uh....” He broke off, grinning.

“Oh, my god!” This… this was it. It was really happening. It _had_ happened. Again.

Buffy looked back at Spike and saw a nervous expression cross his face.

“Sun’s up,” he noted, still stroking the uncovered flesh at her side. “You’ll stay with me?”

She bit her lip, thinking about it all over again. How many times had she replayed this in her head before the whacked insane-o trip, feeling more and more awful about it each time? What if… what if it wasn’t actually awful? What if she gave it a shot, and could make it good?

Buffy swallowed, taking just a little longer to drink in all of the emotions written in Spike’s eyes. “I… I’ll stay,” she said at last. 

His eyes lit up, as if he hadn’t actually been expecting her to agree. “You will?” he pressed. “You–”

Buffy pressed a finger to his lips. Her mind was still racing and she barely knew what she was doing, but she heard herself say, “Three conditions.”

“Anything,” Spike vowed, and she lowered her finger again, counting out the terms on her right hand.

“One: no more of the ‘you came back wrong’ bull.” She paused to gauge his reaction again and was happy to see contrition, so, emboldened, she continued. “Two: no hitting. Things go back to how they were before your chip stopped working on me.”

Slowly, and with a bit more contrition on his face, Spike nodded.

“Three,” said Buffy, feeling her heart speed up even more. She paused and Spike said, “Pet? What is it?”

She took a deep breath and jumped in, choosing happiness. Choosing Spike.

“Tell me you love me,” she said. 

And he did. He showed her, too. Visibly melting at the request. 

Buffy felt melted in return and – most importantly – _let_ him show her all the love he’d ever professed and more, not being long in showing and saying it back. 

Soon, Buffy discovered she’d chosen happiness for more than just herself.

And she had no regrets.


End file.
